Internet Explorer nibbles browser rivals, swells by 1%

Microsoft celebrates market share rise as competitors droop

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Internet Explorer's share of the browser market went up last month, by 0.99 per cent, according to new data from Net Market Share. Microsoft's slow claw-back of market share from its rivals puts Internet Explorer's global market share at 53.83 per cent, saving it from plunging below the 50 per cent mark and marking an overall net gain of 1.2 per cent in the past five months.

All of the other major browsers experienced a small dip during last month. Firefox dropped 0.37 per cent, going from 20.92 per cent to 20.55 per cent of the market; and Chrome continued its drop from a high of 19.11 per cent in December last year and 18.90 per cent last month to just 18.57 per cent last month. Meanwhile, Safari's sliver of the market dropped from 5.24 per cent to 5.07 per cent; while Opera dropped from 1.71 to 1.62 per cent.

With a gain of .99% last month and a net gain of 1.2% global usage share over the last five months, Internet Explorer has stabilized and even reversed its usage share declines of the last few years.

Internet Explorer hit a low of 51.87 per cent of users worldwide in December 2011.

Windows 7 users seemed to be opting to keep Internet Explorer 9 as the main browser on their computers in another metric welcomed by Microsoft:

We continue to see great strides made against our core metric: IE9 share on Windows 7. This month in the US nearly 50 per cent of Windows 7 users are experiencing the best the web has to offer with IE9.

The Net Market Share data suggests that 48.8 per cent of Windows 7 users are using Internet Explorer 9, compared to the 14.6 per cent on Chrome and 11.6 per cent on Firefox 11 – in the States.

Worldwide, the number of Win 7 users on IE9 is only 34.5 per cent with Chrome snagging 21.1 per cent, and Firefox 11 13.3 per cent. ®